In the end, the party was a success.

So yesterday had a bit of a rough start, but, at the end, Russ and I successfully pulled off a great party.

When we got up, the first thing we did was clean the house. Chloe Jo loves to help clean. She did a great job dusting the doors, her bed and the couch. Ha! After she got bored with that, she decided to get into everything and bug me to the point of me wanting to scream. Silly thing. She knew something was up.

Since I was cleaning, I went ahead and started the washing machine. 20 minutes later, I realized that I didn't put the pile of clothes in it. It had been washing with nothing in it! That was strike #1 for me.

Strike #2 came when I was making puppy chow for the desert table. Puppy chow is Crispex covered with melted chocolate and peanut butter, covered with powdered sugar. It is yummy! I had put the powdered sugar in a ziploc with the Crispex and started shaking it up to make the powdered sugar coat the Crispex. While I was shaking my bag burst open and made an enormous mess in the kitchen that I had just finished cleaning! It's pretty funny now that I'm typing about it, but it was so frustrating at the time.

Strike #3 was the fact that I completely burned the bottom of the pigs in a blanket. Russ said they were just a little burnt. He's too kind. They were completely black on the bottoms.

Even though I got 3 strikes during the day, the party was tons of fun. We had lots of good food, fellowship and fun!

Yummy. I love finger foods.

I ended up making pigs in a blanket, puppy chow, chocolate covered pretzels, cheesecake cupcakes, sausage balls, homemade apple cider and homemade hot chocolate. The apple cider turned out awesome! It was a new recipe and I loved it. The hot chocolate was also a new recipe, but I didn't like it at all. It was way too chocolatey...if that is even possible!

The ornament exchange was hilariously fun. I had everyone write down a fact about themselves that the others might not know. I handed out the note cards to write on before we ate so they would have time to think about what they wanted to write down. I picked up the cards and read each one out loud one at a time. The person who guessed who the note card was written by got to choose an ornament from the pile. Since I had made the game completely up, it went really well and I think everyone else had a good time playing.

All in all, the party turned out great...even if I did coat the kitchen with powdered sugar beforehand.